Four Computing Finds

A Friday Hodgepodge

This week, I piggyback on my weekly review for a short, quick post...

1. I was surprised to learn recently that there are lots of garbage flash cards floating around out there. Fortunately, there is f3, a software that can test performance and capacity of same.

F3?

It stands for fight flash fraud.

Image by Standard Books, via download page for The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, public domain.

2. Foliate is billed by one tech reviewer as "the best eBook reader for Linux."

I plan to try it the next time I download something from Standard Books.

3. Do you work with PDFs a lot? A technical writing site explains how to link to specific pages of a PDF from HTML.

Naturally, I wondered if there was a way to do this in Emacs org-mode and learned about a way to do so.

4. The next time I have image-heavy work to do, I might look into lsix, a Linux utility that operates like ls, but provides thumbnails of any images.

It may sound redundant, given that there are plenty of file browsers that do this, but at least two things about this tool appeal to me. First, it runs in the terminal, so no need to context-switch or wait for another application to fire up, and second, for large numbers of images, it displays them a few at a time, so there is not need to wait for every single thumbnail to be created before looking for the right one.

Interestingly, it shows individual frames of animated gif files.

-- CAV

'That Person' -- Or Mrs Peacock?

Advice columnist Eric Thomas answers a letter that could have been from a much younger me.

The writer is concerned about frequently being the one to take the initiative in neighborhood social gatherings, and describes a few instaces.

None of them sound even remotely out of bounds to me.

Thomas's advice is good for a chuckle, and likely, reassurance for many of his readers:

Image by Jatin Sindhu, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

In the mid-'80s murder mystery film "Clue", Mrs. Peacock finds herself at a deathly boring party (that's about to get a lot deathlier). Faced with awkward silence, she says, "Well, someone's got to break the ice and it might as well be me."

She then launches into a long, hilariously bizarre monologue. It's awkward but it does what it was meant to do -- break the ice.

Embrace your inner Mrs. Peacock with no shame. Ideally, everyone at a social gathering would feel empowered to say and do what makes them comfortable, but social mores and shyness often conspire under the guise of politeness. That's where Mrs. Peacocks show their plumage. [bold added]

As someone who is naturally very shy and not great at reading social cues, I have struggled with such dilemmas often. I even once went so far as to investigate whether I might be on the autism spectrum.

Over time, though, I made enough peace with the fact that, as his reader might put it, my "social batteries" run out faster than others' seem to, that I just go ahead with what I need to do.

I decided long ago that if there was a small hit to take, doing such things was worth it. Nevertheless, it's good to know that not only might I usually not be taking a hit, I may have actually helped a few other party attendees now and then in the past.

-- CAV

Maria Machado Update

Earlier this year, I posted "Coward Maduro Bans 80-Year-Old Opponent," ending as follows:

Sadly for Venezuela, the Maduro regime, scared of this kind, elderly lady and the optimistic, sunny view of the world she represents, has, predictably, blocked her election bid, like the cowards that they are.

Back then, I opined that said candidate, Corina Yoris, was someone I could support, which should tell you something.

Yoris was running as the standard-bearer of a ten-party coalition hoping to unseat the Maduro regime, and so I reckoned on yet another rubber-stamp election with no serious opposition.

Fortunately, I was wrong. One Edmundo Gonzalez, a little-known septuagenarian diplomat, was permitted to run as the opposition candidate, replacing Yoris, who, as far as I can tell, had been the (original) stand-in for Maria Machado -- the "real" candidate -- who herself had been banned from running by the nation's court of "justice."

According to DNyuz, Gonzalez is doing quite well in the polls on the strength of Machado's barnstorming:

Machado (Image by SantanaZ, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

... Machado, a conservative former member of the national assembly once rejected by her own colleagues, has not only corralled Venezuela's fractious opposition behind her, but has also captivated a broad swath of the electorate with a promise for sweeping government change.

...

That morning, Ms. Machado's security adviser was the latest in a string of campaign members to be arrested by the government. To evade authorities, the opposition leader sped out of Caracas before dawn, her car windows still bearing the cracks from rock-throwing Maduro supporters.

By late afternoon, she had climbed onto her car's roof in Guanare, wearing pearl earrings and a ponytail.

The cries of support reached a fever pitch. At her side, a man without shoes asked how he could help protect her.

The ongoing campaign of official harassment bodes ill for the regime honoring an unfavorable result, but stranger things have happened.

Is Machado's ability to go about as she does a sign that the regime fears outright rebellion if they do anything too thuggish about her now? If that's the case, perhaps Venezuela's national nightmare will come to an end in the near future.

-- CAV

Dems: Please Stick Finger in Wind

I share Byron York's surprise:

What was a surprise was the speed with which the party apparatus ran to embrace Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Before Biden's decision, there was a lot of talk about possible replacements at the top of the ticket -- not just Harris but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and others. But once Biden withdrew, there was a stampede to Harris. By Sunday evening, a majority of House Democrats, a majority of Senate Democrats, a majority of Democratic governors, and all of the state party chairs had committed to support Harris. No, the top names pushing Biden out, most notably Obama, did not join in. But by Monday morning, Harris was well on her way to securing the Democratic nomination. [bold added]

And as if that weren't an unpleasant-enough surprise, Joe Manchin quashed rumors that he was getting ready to toss his hat in the Democratic ring.

Are they serious about saving American "democracy?" Or even about beating Trump? you might well ask.

In case anyone needs reminding, York reviews Harris's poor performance in the 2020 Democrat primaries in near-excruciating detail.

The fact that she couldn't win within her own party should cause even its most doctrinaire members to consider an alternative.

One can hope that Manchin changes his mind, or that someone half-sane decides to challenge ahead of the convention, or even that this show of unity is just a trial balloon -- ahead of dismal polls prompting the selection of someone who could win the general by the powers-that-be.

A piece in DNyuz offers what might be the sanest possible explanation, in the context of the Democrats assuming America has an "anti-MAGA majority:"

In the end, Ms. Harris and the Democrats might win a coin-flip election by campaigning on abortion and democracy, just as Mr. Biden's advocates hoped he would. But it's far harder to be confident about that assumption today. After all, Mr. Biden had been trailing in the polls for essentially 10 straight months -- long before the first presidential debate.

That's a mighty tenuous might. With four years' worth of footage of Harris's word salads, awful cackling, and pieties like introducing herself with pronouns floating around, the Republicans won't need to paint a caricature of an out-of-touch, sanctimonious leftist: She already is one.

And for anyone not on social media, there plenty of this kind of foolishness to find in the news:

For example, at her peak, Harris, who was then a Democratic senator from California and who earlier, as state attorney general, focused on "environmental justice," announced she would file a bill expanding the progressive idea of "justice" to virtually every aspect of American life. "Environmental justice is interconnected with every aspect of our fight for justice," she said in a statement to the left-wing publication Grist. "From racial justice and economic justice, to housing justice and educational justice, we cannot disentangle the environment people live in from the lives they live." Referring to the riots taking place across the country, she added, "These crises we are experiencing have exposed injustices in our nation that many of us have known and fought our entire lives."

Memo to Democrats from an anti-MAGA, "double hater" voter: Just because we don't like Trump doesn't make us far left "progressives." If this inane apparatchik is your "alternative" to Trump (and his lunatic, anti-republican ideologue running mate), lots of us will hold our noses and vote for him -- or simply stay home.

Try again.

-- CAV

No Mo' Joe. Which Way Will Dems Go?

The weekend ended with the not completely unexpected news that Joe Biden is standing down from his reelection campaign, and has endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, as his party's nominee.

I know little about how the Democrats will formally change their ticket, but I doubt this endorsement alone makes Harris Trump's opponent in November.

Given all the headlines questioning the Veep's electability, including a lengthy piece at The Free Press, I'd say there's a non-zero chance someone will step forward to challenge her.

Setting aside policy considerations for the sake of argument, there's ample room for improvement, as the following paragraphs from the Free Press piece indicate:

... One of her biggest weaknesses is that she doesn't seem to have any principles. Her stance on criminal justice reform is a key example. Is she soft or tough on crime? Looking at her record as a prosecutor, it's nearly impossible to say.

...

Meanwhile, America has had almost four years to witness Harris as vice president, and her record is not good. She holds the dishonor of being in charge of the Biden administration's border policy. Illegal border crossings at the end of 2023 hit an all-time high, and the border is now the signature issue of the Trump-Vance campaign. Harris was also the White House point person in 2022 on voting rights legislation -- which failed to get out of Congress.

She also suffers from an unpopularity problem, known for her bad habit of laughing at inappropriate times in a cringe-inducing cackle. "When I talk to voters, they all say she is hated, but then they pause and say, 'I don't really know why, though,'" James Johnson, cofounder of the polling firm J.L. Partners, told me.

People who know her best also seem to consider her a terrible boss. In June 2021, White House staffers told Politico that people in the vice president's office "are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it's an abusive environment." By early 2022, four of her most senior advisers had bolted for the exits, prompting The Washington Post to report that many of her critics and supporters "worry that her inability to keep and retain staff will hobble her future ambitions." [bold added]

To be fair, you could say any of these about Donald Trump: Did you know that nearly a dozen people from his past administration won't endorse him for another term?

One could argue that age could be advantageous to Harris in a race between two unlikable candidates, but this is a cop-out. Trump has a core of true believers behind him that Harris simply doesn't have, and he has found a possibly winning coalition of voters during this time of political realignment.

I'd probably vote for Joe Manchin in this election. (Image by United States Congress, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

So Harris -- or any other Democrat candidate -- needs to offer something positive for voters to rally behind. The eventual nominee needs to be able to appeal both to most of the remaining Democrat core constituency, and to persuadable voters.

Above all, remember that this is a general election. If the Dems pick someone who is little better than a stalking-horse for unpopular and destructive left-wing positions, such as Net Zero, they will lose badly.

My two cents would be for someone to run on a moderate platform that includes a promise to legally codify abortion rights -- a position that Democrats happen to support that would also appeal to many independents.

Joe Manchin, anyone?

Many Democrats have rightly praised Biden for stepping down for the good of the country. But it will only be a good thing if the nominee can actually defeat Donald Trump. This isn't a tall order, but don't forget who was ahead in the polls before this annoucement.

Choosing someone from the center would be a big help, and I'm pretty sure Harris wouldn't be that person even without the above-noted baggage.

-- CAV

Four Random Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. You might find the title off-putting, but "Meet the Hobbyists Who Collect Barf Bags" at CNN Travel is a surprisingly fun and benevolent read:

Image by Politikaner, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

Eli Cox, a collector from Austin, Texas, can also blame academia for abetting his hobby. The business professor told CNN he got a portion of his 370-bag collection from students he knew during his teaching days.

"It's been a surprise to me, over the years, to get bags that were mailed from students who had graduated 10 or 20 years earlier, but somehow remembered what I was doing," he said. "It has been a way of connecting people and generating some laughter. So that's really been fun."

Fun, Cox says, is the whole point.

"It's a dopamine producer. When I tell people about it, they first ask if they understood me properly, and then they laugh. And I think there's a dopamine shortage and a laughter shortage in the world right now."

I love that fact that some of these collectors worked with Dramamine on an exhibit in New York called "The Last Barf Bag," and that one of them got the last two words of that phrase inscribed on vanity plates.

2. Staying with air travel for a moment, I got a kick out of learning about "PySkyWiFi," which software developer Robert Heaton describes as a "completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights:"

As I searched I noticed that the login page was encouraging me to sign in to my airmiles account, free of charge, even though I hadn't paid for anything yet. A hole in the firewall, I thought. It's a long way from London to San Francisco so I decided to peer through it.

I logged in to my JetStreamers Diamond Altitude account and started clicking. I went to my profile page, where I saw an edit button. It looked like a normal button: drop shadow, rounded corners, nothing special. I was supposed to use it to update my name, address, and so on.

But suddenly I realised that this was no ordinary button. This clickable rascal would allow me to access the entire internet through my airmiles account. This would be slow. It would be unbelievably stupid. But it would work.

...

Before I could access the entire internet through my airmiles account I'd need to write a few prototypes. At first I thought that I'd write them using Go, but then I realised that if I used Python then I could call the final tool PySkyWiFi. Obviously I did that instead.

Heaton starts out instant messaging through the name field of his air miles account, and eventually comes up with a way to get internet access through it.

I agree with his disclaimer (you obviously shouldn't actually do any of this), but love the ingenuity.

3. If you're about to start a summer internship or know someone who is, Ask a Manager has some funny cautionary tales.

I loved Item 11. That's one way to get nicknamed "Spider Man."

4. File Under "I'll Take Your Word For It:" Ten Things No One Tells You Before an Antarctic Expedition.

Alternate take: Yes, there may well be such a thing as too much butter.

-- CAV

Ten Wonders of Capitalism

I usually reserve Friday for blogging positive things, but I think this week -- which has seen Donald Trump all but guarantee the destruction of the Republican Party as a home for supporters of economic freedom -- has earned an extra day of positivity here.

Without further ado, I share a neat post by software consultant Hillel Wayne titled "Ten Weird Things You Can Buy Online (And Why You Would)."

His criteria should tell you that this is a cut or two above some dude finding random, stupid things -- as you might understandably be inclined to think after spending too much time on social media or following the news:

• Not a one-off. It's either something a merchant is selling on an ongoing basis or something with an active marketplace of buyers and sellers.
• There's an actual legitimate use. No gag gifts or collectors items.
• There's an actual price. It's not "call for a quote". If I have to call for a quote then I can't just buy it on a whim.

I'll list the items here -- not to steal thunder, but to pique curiosity. It's worth learning something about each:

1. Three Yards of Books
2. Human Milk
3. A Life-Size Animatronic Whale Shark
4. Private Islands
5. Uranium
6. Chlamydia
7. Live Bees
8. Bedbugs
9. Rollercoasters
10. Oil Tankers

It's a mostly light-hearted post, but Wayne is within inches of the awe and reverence that are strangely missing from our age.

There's a measure of having a fresh look at things too many of us take for granted, as we see with the market for human milk:

I really like how this is the perfect example of how marketplaces develop. Some women overproduce milk, some underproduce it, there's an inefficiency in allocation, therefore market!

And you might also get a sense of awe at what the Invisible Hand of mutually beneficial trade has wrought:

It's insane to think that there'd be a secondhand market for eight-hundred foot oil tankers. This sent me down the UN Maritime Transport Review rabbit-hole, where I learned that in 2021 shipyards built the tonnage-equivalent of 1200 Aframaxes (pdf. 43). Nothing else made me realize just how unimaginably vast world trade is and just how much work goes into keeping the international supply chains running.

The post is a fun read, but I read it while on a walk, so I also reflected on it a bit.

So let me recommend this fun and thought-provoking read with the modest additional suggestion of giving yourself some time to let it sink in, and to ponder that this is just a small sample of the limitlessness potential of human creativity and trade.

-- CAV